Patti Smith Delivers The First Single From Her New Album

Patti Smith delivers the first single, ‘April Fool’, from her forthcoming album, featuring songs for Johnny Depp and Amy Winehouse.

Patti Smith

Smith revealed that she was including a song for Winehouse titled ‘This Is The Girl’ on her next album back in January, saying “We were at Electric Lady doing a whole other song and I wrote Amy a little poem when she died and my bass player, Tony Shanahan, wrote a piece of music and the two matched perfectly”.

The album also reportedly features a song for Johnny Depp’s birthday, titled ‘Nine’. The first single ‘April Fool’, featuring Tom Verlaine, is available on iTunes now.

The full album will be the first original studio effort since 2004’s Trampin’. It’s to be titled Banga, which she told CBS is a reference to Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita.

There’s an hour-long interview with the proto-punk icon at the CBS website, where she performs ‘My Blakean Year’ from Trampin and ‘Grateful’ from 2000’s Gung Ho.

Banga was recorded in Electric Lady Studios with collaborators Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty, and Tony Shanahan and will be released on June 5.

“Happy 40th birthday to the Hotel California album. It truly doesn't seem like that long ago. An honor to be a part of such great project. May you shine for another 40 years,” former Eagles guitarist Don Felder announced today.

“Ground control to Major Tom” indeed. In a remarkable coincidence astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, has been treated by Dr David Bowie in a New Zealand hospital after being evacuated from the South Pole.